The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The youngest of the Oakland A’s Moneyball-era “Big Three” starting pitchers, and the last to join the organization and to debut in the majors, Barry Zito reached a higher peak than either Tim Hudson or Mark Mulder while helping the A’s to five postseason appearances from 2000-06. Renowned for a curveball that was considered the best in the game, he made three All-Star teams and is the only one of the trio to win a Cy Young award. He parlayed his success into a record-setting free agent contract with the Giants, though outside of his trademark durability, he rarely lived up to the expectations that it carried.

Then again, Zito rarely lived up to the standard expectations that come with being a high-profile professional athlete. Yes, he surfed, but he also played guitar, practiced yoga and meditation, traveled with scented candles and satin bed pillows sewn by his mother, and read books about the power of positive thinking. In the eyes of the often-hyperbolic agent Scott Boras, who netted him a seven-year, $126 million deal from the Giants in December 2006, he was “Zigasso… the artist-poet-intellectual.” Oookay.

Despite standing 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, Zito was not a particularly hard thrower, but the rest of his repertoire made up for it, at least in the best of times. From a 2004 Sports Illustrated profile by Michael Silver:

Call it mind over batter: His unrivaled curveball with the roller-coaster drop and his crafty changeup set up a sub-90s fastball that isn’t nearly as hittable as it appears. “He throws strikes and dares you to hit it,” says New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, “and because you have to wait so long for that curve, it makes his fastball that much faster.”

Where Hudson — who’s also on this year’s ballot for the first time — finished his career with numbers worthy of a substantial Hall of Fame debate, Zito fell short; his JAWS is exactly half of the standard for starting pitchers. This figures to be his only appearance on a BBWAA ballot, but as this year’s only first-timer to win a major award, he gets a standalone One-and-Done entry in my series. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about what went down at MLB’s non-tender deadline, touching on whether the news for arbitration-eligible players was as dire as forecasted, the more notable non-tenders, and the short- and long-term futures of free agency, then (29:36) talk to Jason Coskrey of The Japan Times about how the NPB’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks have built a dynasty that has won four consecutive Japan Series titles (and seven since 2011), how the Hawks have influenced the rest of the league, the MLB futures of Oscar Luis Colás (the “Cuban Ohtani”) and ace Tomoyuki Sugano, the strength of women’s baseball in Japan, how the NPB dealt with the pandemic, and whether more foreign players may want to play in Japan.

Audio intro: The Mountain Goats, "High Hawk Season"
Audio interstitial: Superchunk, "Hello Hawk"
Audio outro: Shovels & Rope, "The Last Hawk"

Link to list of non-tendered players
Link to list of signed players who avoided arbitration
Link to Craig Edwards on non-tender takeaways
Link to FanGraphs Audio non-tender reactions
Link to FanGraphs international prospect rankings
Link to Jason on the Hawks’ recent dominance
Link to Jason on the Hawks’ latest Japan Series win
Link to Jason on the Pacific League/Central League imbalance
Link to Jason on the NPB’s COVID restrictions
Link to MLB.com story on Colás
Link to MLB Network segment on Colás
Link to Colás video
Link to Jason on Sugano
Link to Sugano video
Link to Jason on women’s baseball in Japan
Link to Jessica Luther on women’s baseball in Japan
Link to story about Ayami Sato

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Episode 899

The FanGraphs crew gets together to discuss Wednesday’s non-tender deadline and the many moves surrounding it, including a longer look at one of the league’s newest free agents.

• To start the show, Eric Longenhagen and Jason Martinez attempt to run down the majority of the transactions from this week. While there may not have been quite as many cuts as expected, plenty of talented players now find themselves free agents. Who could benefit the most from the buyer’s market? What about the possibility of the universal DH? Eric and Jason also look ahead to the upcoming Rule 5 Draft, which could result in even more moves. [2:18]
• Next, Craig Edwards and Ben Clemens discuss the career arc of Kyle Schwarber, who was non-tendered by the Cubs. The 27-year-old was the fourth overall pick in 2014 and famously helped the Cubs win their 2016 World Series Championship, but he’s now the kind of player who can be had for cheap. Craig and Ben go back through Schwarber’s career so far, including a number of decisions that could have broken very differently. [39:06]

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

Dan Szymborski: Last Thursday, you got to eat turkey. THIS Thursday, you get to talk with a big turkey!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: I can’t say anything about hockey, but the NBA and NFL have a mechanism that works against this sort of thing: trading draft picks.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: IMA GONNA MAKE YOU READ THE ZiPS DISCLAIMER

Read the rest of this entry »

For the last half-decade, Anaheim (the city — the team is just the Los Angeles Angels these days) has been home to the best shortstop defense on the planet. That’s because in 2015 the Angels traded for Andrelton Simmons, the best defender in the game by UZR, DRS, OAA, the eye test, general acclaim, and common sense.

Simmons reached free agency after the 2020 season, and a reunion seemed unlikely after he opted out of the last week of the season. The team is trying its luck in the trade market again, though: last night, they acquired José Iglesias from the Orioles in exchange for two pitching prospects:

Orioles announce they have acquired RHP Jean Pinto and RHP Garrett Stallings from the Los Angeles Angels in exchange for INF José Iglesias.

— Dan Connolly (@danconnolly2016) December 3, 2020

Iglesias, too, is a brilliant defender at the position. He’s rangy and sure-handed, but his standout defensive attribute might be his strong, accurate arm. In fact, he graded out as the best defensive shortstop in the majors in 2020 per Statcast’s Outs Above Average. In fairness, he only played 24 games at the position due a strained left quad, which means the sample is even smaller than the already-small 2020 season would normally entail, but still: best in baseball! Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s prospect list and subsequent discussion surrounds international players, and like most things you’ve experienced this year, it’s going to be a little bit different than usual. Typically, the international prospect coverage at FanGraphs consists of a preliminary list of players during our February Prospects Week, with a longer, more thorough ranking published closer to July 2, historically the day foreign amateur players are allowed to start signing.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, MLB pushed this year’s signing day back by six months from July 2020 to January 2021. For the purposes of my workflow, previewing the signing festivities now lines up with nicely with the early free agency period when pro players from foreign leagues are being posted by their old clubs and courted by their new ones. And though not exclusively, it has also generally fallen to me to acquire basic scouting notes on these players, though there has never been a central location on the site, like The Board, to house those reports.

This change in timing, combined with the way the Future Value scale enables apples-to-oranges comparisons between very different baseball players, led me to decide to simply fold the foreign pros in with the fresh-faced youngsters whose big league dreams are still half a decade away. And so The Board’s International Players tab will now be a running pref list of players abroad regardless of their origin or experience level, subject to sweeping updates a couple times of year while also changing incrementally throughout as players sign and move to the pro side of The Board or become known through my sources and research.

This likely isn’t just a single-year, COVID-related change to the international amateur calendar (and therefore my work). All of the people in baseball I’ve spoken to for this list think that MLB will also push the next signing period back six months, and that a January start to the signing period will become the new normal, until and unless an international draft is instituted. Like many of the societal shifts we’re all dealing with during this difficult time, the changes to the international calendar and signing rules have had immediate consequences to those who had planned for a world without them. So before I talk more about what’s on The Board, let’s consider the changes to the international amateur market and what they’ve meant for this year’s class. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Gentile’s big-league career was filled with peaks and valleys. Short in duration — seven full seasons preceded by two cups of coffee — it was bookended by a lack of opportunity. In between, Gentile was a beast with the bat. From 1960-1964, the slugging first baseman logged a 139 wRC+ and made three All-Star teams. His 1961 campaign was Brobdingnagian. Playing for the Baltimore Orioles, “Diamond Jim” slashed .302/.423/.646 with 46 home runs and 141 RBIs — the last of those numbers being noteworthy for more reasons that one. Five decades later, it made his bank account just a little bit bigger.

Gentile — now 86 years young — reminisced about his bygone career over the phone earlier this summer.

———

David Laurila: You were signed out of (a San Francisco) high school by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952. What was that experience like for you?

Jim Gentile: “Well, we didn’t have a draft. Once you graduated, you hoped your phone rang. I knew I was going to get signed, it was just a matter of with who. I talked to the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Phillies, and then the Dodgers scout came over last. We had dinner with him at the house, and we liked their offer. I signed for a bonus of $30,000 with a Double-A contract. Once I got a big-league contract, I got $7,500 more.

“This was in June of ’52 and they said, ‘Let’s wait until ’53; then you can go out to spring training.’ So I was home, and around August they called and said that one of the pitchers in Santa Barbara — that was the California State League, Class C — had gotten hurt. Would I like to go down there and see what professional baseball was like?

“I walked into the clubhouse, and [manager] George Scherger met me. We talked, then he handed me a baseball and said, ‘You’re pitching tonight.’ [San Jose] had just signed two guys for $80,000, and Marty Keough for $125,000. They were all my age, but starting out in Class C. I pitched against them. I had a no-hitter for seven innings, then they beat me in the eighth inning, The score was 3-2.”

Laurila: So your first professional game went pretty well…

Gentile: “Yes, but after that it was ‘Get the married men off the infield,’ because they started hitting me all over the place. I won two and lost six. The two I won, I won with my own home runs, so when ’53 came around they asked if I wanted to pitch or play first. I said, ‘I really like to hit, so let’s try first base.’ They put me at first, and that’s where I stayed. Read the rest of this entry »